Sales at top three local home shopping companies via mobile devices shot up in the first quarter of the year from a year ago, while those based on the Internet and TV were slackening, records from the companies showed Wednesday.Sales at CJ O Shopping Co., formerly known as CJ Home Shopping, from mobile devices rose more than four-fold to 145.3 billion won ($141.5 million) in the January-March period, compared with 35 billion won a year earlier, the company said. Mobile sales are expected to more

Four out of 10 South Koreans are unwilling to shoulder the economic burden of potential unification with North Korea, a poll showed Wednesday.The survey of 1,001 people nationwide found that 44.3 percent of the respondents said they have no desire to pay a dime while 31.9 percent said they are willing to pay less than 50,000 won ($48) per year as costs of unification.It also showed that 11.7 percent said they are willing to pay between 50,000 won and 100,000 won per year as costs of unification.

South Korea's major companies reported weaker earnings than expected for the first quarter of the year, data showed Wednesday, which could further exacerbate the already-slowed local stock market.The data compiled by market researcher FnGuide show that 25 out of 72 firms that released their first-quarter earnings missed market estimates, most of them construction, shipbuilding and petrochemical firms.Samsung Heavy Industries Co., a major shipbuilder, reported an operating loss of 363 billion won

Xiaomi Tech, a Chinese smartphone maker, outpaced U.S. giant Apple Inc. in China's market share during the first quarter, data showed Wednesday, emerging as another threat to Samsung Electronics Co.Xiaomi became the No. 3 player in the region with a market share of 11 percent, outdoing Apple for the first time, according to the data by Counterpoint Technology Market Research. The U.S. firm's market share measured at 10 percent.South Korea's Samsung maintained its top spot at 18 percent, followed

The impact of asset prices and bank lending should be taken into account when calculating the potential economic growth as financial instability tends to amplify the depth of an economic crisis, a central bank report showed Friday.The report from the Bank of Korea said that there is the need to calculate the potential GDP by including financial factors such as asset prices and bank lending as the output gap could be miscalculated when inflation remains low.The output gap refers to the difference

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has named his confidant Hwang Pyong-so as the military's top political officer, the country's state news agency said Friday, the latest in a series of reshuffles that indicated the dwindling power of Hwang's predecessor.Hwang's appointment as the director of the General Political Bureau of the Korean People's Army was confirmed in a speech he delivered at a banquet in Pyongyang on Thursday marking May Day, according to the Korean Central News Agency.The move came

President Park Geun-hye said Friday she plans to officially apologize again for the government's response to the deadly sinking of the ferry Sewol amid criticism that an earlier apology was reluctant and not formal enough.On Tuesday, Park said she was sorry about the way the government handled the disaster that left more than 300 people dead or missing. But some families of victims found the apology insufficient and reluctant, saying she made the remarks while presiding over a Cabinet meeting.Cr

Unionists at Citibank Korea Inc., a local unit of U.S.-based Citigroup Inc., said Friday they are ready to go on strike to protest branch closures and restructuring plans by the bank management.The 3,200-member union voted earlier this week in favor of a walkout in an overwhelming majority of 91.6 percent. Their strike would be the first at a local bank in three years since the strike at the Standard Chartered Bank Korea in 2011 when unionists protested the introduction of a performance-based ma

South Korean men's football roster for this year's FIFA World Cup will be announced earlier than scheduled, the sport's national governing body said Friday.The Korea Football Association said the 23-man roster for the big tournament in Brazil will be revealed Thursday, a day earlier than initially scheduled. The KFA explained that the change is designed to give players more time to prepare themselves mentally before reporting to their training camp on May 12 at the National Football Center in Pa

A 10-year-old boy who owns a staggering 15.5 billion won ($15 million) was among South Korea's stock-rich kids whose number was at its highest as conglomerate owners and their relatives gave away stocks as gifts to their children, data showed Friday.The data compiled by market research firm Chaebul.com showed there were 126 children aged 12 or below who held shares worth at least 100 million won at the end of April, up from 118 a year ago. The figure marks the highest-ever on record, the data sh

Five more bodies were recovered from a sunken ferry on Friday amid concerns that swift currents will hamper search operations and may have swept many bodies far away from the sinking site. Since the ferry Sewol carrying 476 people capsized off South Korea's southwestern island of Jindo on April 16, a total of 226 people have been confirmed dead, mostly high school students on a field trip to the southern resort island of Jeju.With 76 people still remaining missing, concerns have grown that the b

The Chinese border city of Yanji has been planning to launch an open market trading North Korean fine art including paintings this year, according to a local newspaper on Thursday. The move comes as many Chinese collectors frequently visit the city to buy North Korean artworks, the Yanbian Daily newspaper reported, citing an art association affiliated with the Yanbian prefecture. Yanji is a capital city of the Korean autonomous prefecture located along the Tumen River bordering North Korea. Give

North Korea increased imports of vehicles and alcoholic beverages from Hong Kong in 2013, despite an overall drop in bilateral trade, a South Korean report showed Thursday.The trade representative office for Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency in Hong Kong said Pyongyang spent $4.36 million to buy vehicles, up 27.5 percent from the year before, a large number of them with over 3-liter engine and seating capacity for more than 10 people.Cars were the second-largest single product imported by

South Korea's exports surged to a second-highest monthly tally in April with imports also growing at a steady pace, the government said Thursday.Outbound shipments came to $50.31 billion in April, up 9 percent from the same month last year. Imports rose 5 percent on-year to $45.85 billion, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.The country's trade surplus widened to $4.46 billion last month from $2.51 billion in April 2013, marking the 27th consecutive month of surplus."The coun